This presentation (.pdf), subtitled “Striking a balance between site stability, feature velocity, performance, and cost” is an interesting view into the architectural design of a massively large Internet service. The authors, Randy Shoup and Dan Pritchett, describe scale out (horizontal scaling), not up, in all tiers. They release 100,000 lines of code per week, which I find hard to believe. They’ve rewritten the entire app in Java (J2EE) but its a highly customized environment using mostly servelets.
Author Archives: admin
The 60 Minute Network Security Guide
From the US NSA spy agency, a useful set of computer security recommendations (.pdf), subtitled “First Steps Towards a Secure Network Environment.” Besides general policies(e.g., least privilege, password rules), the guide includes a discussion of operating system-specific security recommendations, including Windows and Unix (–>Linux) and packages (e.g., Sendmail and Apache). And it comes with a free poison-tipped umbrella!
Symantec to acquire Altiris
Symantec just announced that they’re going to acquire Altiris for $830MM.
Tracking OpenID
OpenID continues to gain traction. Here’s a useful guide for most-of-the-rest-of-us on how to use it.
Open source catalog from Optaros
Optaros has a new catalog of open source projects ranked by maturity, adoption, direction, and other characteristics. It’s a useful reference. With an introduction by Bruno von Rotz.
Link (free registration required)